Renée Nicole Good, the 37-year-old woman shot and killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis on Wednesday, was a mother of three born and raised in Colorado who had recently moved to Minnesota.
In social media accounts, Good described herself as a “poet and writer and wife and mom and (expletive) guitar strummer from Colorado.” She said she was currently “experiencing Minneapolis,” displaying a pride flag emoji on her .
A profile picture posted to Pinterest shows her smiling and holding a young child against her cheek, along with posts about tattoos, hairstyles and home decorating.
Her ex-husband, who on the condition he not be named out of concern for the safety of their children, said Good had just dropped off her 6-year-old son at school Wednesday and was driving home with her current partner when they encountered a group of ICE agents on a snowy street in Minneapolis.
“Thatap so stupid” that she was killed, her mother Donna Ganger said, after learning about some of the circumstances from a reporter, the . “She was probably terrified.”
Ganger told the newspaper that her daughter was “not part of anything like that at all,” referring to the protesters challenging ICE agents in Minneapolis.
Good and her partner had moved to the city last year from Kansas City, Missouri, her ex-husband said.
Video taken by bystanders posted to social media shows an officer approaching her car, demanding she open the door and grabbing the handle. When she begins to pull forward, a different ICE officer standing in front of the vehicle pulls his weapon and immediately fires at least two shots into the vehicle at close range.
In another video taken after , a distraught woman is seen sitting near the vehicle, wailing, “Thatap my wife, I don’t know what to do!”
Calls and messages to Good’s current partner received no response.
Other relatives, including Good’s parents, could not be reached or did not return requests for comment from The Denver Post on Thursday.
Her parents live in Valley Falls, Kansas, northwest of Kansas City, and a man at the home told a reporter they weren’t ready to speak to the media, .
It’s not clear how long Good lived in Colorado, but she was registered as an unaffiliated voter beginning in 2008. She last voted in El Paso County in 2014. Her registration was inactive after that and was canceled in January 2025, state voter records show.
Her voter registration records list four different Colorado Springs addresses through 2014.
Trump administration officials painted Good as a domestic terrorist who had attempted to ram federal agents with her car. Her ex-husband said she was no activist and that he had never known her to participate in a protest of any kind.
Good appears to have never been charged with anything involving law enforcement beyond a 2012 traffic ticket in El Paso County.
Her ex-husband described her as a devoted Christian who took part in youth mission trips to Northern Ireland when she was younger. She loved to sing, participating in a chorus in high school and studying vocal performance in college.
“She was a lovely person, and itap tragic to me,” Jane Scharl, a childhood friend who met Good at their church in Colorado Springs, . “I wish people would stop politicizing it so badly right out of the gate and just let people mourn.”
Good studied creative writing at Old Dominion University in Virginia and won a prize in 2020 for one of her works, a poem titled according to a post on the school’s . Her poetry was published in Metrosphere and Coronado Literary Review, according to the university.
“When she is not writing, reading or talking about writing, she has movie marathons and makes messy art with her daughter and two sons,” the school’s English department wrote.
Good graduated from Old Dominion in December 2020 with an English degree, according to a statement from university president Brian O. Hemphill.
“This is yet another clear example that fear and violence have sadly become commonplace in our nation,” Hemphill said in the statement. “…May Renée’s life be a reminder of what unites us: freedom, love and peace. My hope is for compassion, healing and reflection at a time that is becoming one of the darkest and most uncertain periods in our nation’s history.”
Good also hosted a podcast with her second husband, , a U.S. Air Force veteran and stand-up comedian who died in 2023.
She had a daughter and her son from her first marriage, who are now ages 15 and 12. Her 6-year-old son was from her marriage to Macklin.
Her ex-husband said she had primarily been a stay-at-home mom in recent years but had previously worked as a dental assistant and at a credit union.
“Renée was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known,” Ganger, her mother, told the Star Tribune. “She was extremely compassionate. She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being.”
Good, her partner and her son moved away from Kansas City in December 2024, .
Joan Rose told the Kansas City news station that she was shocked to learn her former neighbor was the person killed by ICE in Minneapolis: “I know that we’re all affected by the ICE raids going on right now. I didn’t think it would hit this hard, this close to home.”
Good petitioned a Missouri court to change her name from Renée Nicole Macklin to Renée Nicole Macklin Good in 2023 because, she said, “I want to share a name with my partner,” the .
At the time of the petition, which was granted, Good’s two older children lived in Colorado and the youngest lived in Kansas City, according to the newspaper.
A set up to raise money for Good’s partner and son had raised more than $1 million by Thursday evening.
Denver Post staff writers Shelly Bradbury, Sam Tabachnik, Elizabeth Hernandez and Katie Langford, and Greeley Tribune staff writer Andrea Grajeda, contributed to this report.
